_N.B_.--The two queerest things I have noticed in Calcutta up to now
are:
(_a_) That when a man goes out to tennis and stays to dinner his
bearer carries his dress-clothes _wrapped in a towel_.
(_b_) Kippered herrings come to the table _rolled up in paper_.
_Calcutta, Dec. 2_.
I don't think I like this casting of bread upon the water; I never
know which loaf it is I am receiving again. You reply to things I had
forgotten I had written, and it is rather bewildering.
When you get this you will be settled down in Germany. I am sorry you
have left London for one reason, and that a purely selfish one. I
shan't be able to imagine you in your new surroundings, and in London
I knew pretty well what you would be doing every minute of the day.
Knowing, as we do, many of the same people, when you wrote "I have
been dining with the Maxwell-Tempests to meet the So-and-sos," I could
picture it all even to little Mrs. Maxwell-Tempest's attitudes. I
was only in Germany once for three days, and I came away with an
impression of a country weird as to food, feathery as to beds, and
crammed full of soldiers; but I dare say it is a very good place to
write a book. And now--my heartiest congratulations on having a book
to write. It sounds--pardon me for saying it--a very dull subject, but
if I were a little wiser I expect I should see how important it
is, and anyway I have enough sense to perceive that it is a great
compliment to be asked to write it.
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